When Denny entered the store, the camera hidden in the Lonesome Dove audio case captured his face, as it had routinely captured the face of every other customer since noon that day. The image was sent to the laptop in the rear of the van across the street, and, more important, to the FBI’s mammoth forensic lab at Quantico, Virginia. There was a match. An alarm alerted a technician. Within seconds of entering the store, Denny was identified as the third Gatsby thief.

Two had been caught. Trey, the fourth, was still decomposing at the bottom of a pond in the Poconos, never to be found nor implicated. Ahmed, the fifth, was still hiding in Europe.

After fifteen minutes, Denny left the store, walked around the corner, and got into a 2011 Honda Accord. The second van followed it at a distance, lost it, then found it parked in the lot of the Sea Breeze Motel, on the beach, a hundred yards from the Lighthouse Inn. A stakeout began.

The Honda Accord had been rented from an agency in Jacksonville that advertised “rent-a-wrecks” and didn’t mind dealing in cash. The name on the application was Wilbur Shifflet, and the manager admitted to the FBI that he thought the Maine driver’s license looked bogus. Shifflet had paid a thousand dollars cash for a two-week rental and waived the insurance.

The FBI was stunned at this development, at its incredible good fortune. But why would one of the thieves hang around the bookstore some eight months after the theft? Was he also watching Mercer? Did he have a connection to Cable? There were many baffling questions to be dealt with later, but at the moment it was a strong indication that Mercer was right. At least one of the manuscripts was in the basement.

At sunset, Denny stepped out of room 18 and Rooker stepped out of the room next door. They walked a hundred yards to the Surf, a popular outdoor bar and grill, where they dined on sandwiches and beer. While they were eating, four FBI agents walked into the office of the Sea Breeze and handed the manager a search warrant. In room 18, they found a gym bag under the bed. It contained a nine-millimeter pistol, six thousand dollars in cash, and fake driver’s licenses from Tennessee and Wyoming. Nothing, though, revealed Wilbur’s true identity. The agents found nothing of value in the room next door.

When Denny and Rooker returned to the Sea Breeze, they were arrested and driven, in total silence and in separate cars, to the FBI office in Jacksonville. They were processed and fingerprinted. Both sets of prints were pushed through the data bank, and by 10:00 p.m. the truth was known. Denny’s military prints revealed his name: Dennis Allen Durban, age thirty-three, born in Sacramento. Rooker’s criminal record nailed him: Bryan Bayer, age thirty-nine, born in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Both refused to cooperate and were put away. Lamar Bradshaw decided to bury them for a few days and sit on the news of their arrests.